A United Airlines Holdings Inc. plane skidded off the taxiway into a grassy area after landing in Houston on Friday, marking the third headline-grabbing crash this week involving the company’s Boeing Co. planes.
United Flight 2477, with 160 passengers and six crew members, had just landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport about 8 a.m. local time when it veered onto the grass in a curve. No one was injured and passengers left the 737 Max on a flight of escalators before being taken by bus to the terminal, the airline said.
Friday’s crash involves a 737 Max that was built four years ago and has been in service for less than a year. It follows the in-flight loss of a tire from a United Boeing 777-200 on Thursday, shortly after the plane took off from San Francisco on a flight to Osaka, Japan, and an engine failure on a United flight from Houston to Fort Myers, Florida, earlier this week.
The plane on the Houston-Florida flight had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines started catching fire 10 minutes after takeoff. The 21-year-old plane was also a 737, but an older version of the Max, according to FlightRadar24.
Boeing shares fell as much as 1.4% after the United crash on Friday. The stock fell 0.8% as of 12:06 p.m. in New York, continuing its worst decline this year among members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. United lost 0.5%.
The 777 bound for Osaka had 249 people on board. The plane was diverted to Los Angeles International Airport and landed without incident. The crashed tire damaged at least one car in the airport parking lot.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate all three crashes, while the National Transportation Safety Board will send a team to Houston. United said it will work with the FAA, NTSB and Boeing to understand what happened. Although they occurred in quick succession, this week’s warnings do not appear linked to known problems with Boeing and its 737 Max, and are unlikely to signal broader safety trends.
In addition to the three incidents, at least two other problems involving United and Boeing occurred this week. On Monday, a United flight en route to San Francisco from Honolulu experienced engine failure over the Pacific before landing safely at its destination, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. That plane was a Boeing 757-300. And the FAA also said it is investigating a United flight from Pensacola, Florida, that landed safely Monday in Chicago after it reported a problem with the 737 plane’s undercarriage.
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The accidents come at an inopportune time for Boeing. The plane maker is working to restore its reputation following a panel blowout in midair on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year. The NTSB found that Boeing workers apparently had not attached the four bolts that held the panel to the plane’s fuselage.
The plane in the January crash was also a 737 Max. Boeing has come under intense scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers and customers over the manufacturing quality of the model, which is back in the headlines this year after being grounded globally in 2019 following two fatal accidents.
Among Boeing’s harshest critics has been United CEO Scott Kirby. United has dropped the next 737 Max 10 from its schedule. The airline is considering switching to other variants of the Max and is in talks with Boeing rival Airbus SE on alternative planes that could replace part of its massive order of Max 10.
In a separate action related to the 737 Max, the FAA on Friday said the plane had wiring problems that were causing a flight control panel to malfunction during flight and causing the planes to roll without pilot intervention .
The agency said this could result in “loss of control of the plane” and ordered airlines to inspect the wiring for signs of chafing. Boeing alerted customers to the problem last July.